[openbeos] Re: Progress reports
- From: Simon Taylor <simontaylor1@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: openbeos@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Mon, 02 Jun 2008 21:49:00 +0100
In my experience, one-man efforts (such as this one to provide
handwritten reports) are very difficult to sustain over a long period of
time. After a while, it becomes hard to keep up, so what starts as a
by-weekly report becomes monthly and then quarterly... The problem with
this approach is that as the reports become more spread apart, the
information becomes old and therefore less newsworthy.
Despite checking the website frequently for the past 3 months, I haven't
looked into my Haiku email folders. I've actually got very little idea
of what has happened in that time.
So you might consider my forthcoming 3 month update less newsworthy than
"Stephan made ProxyAudioSupplier compile again today" but I'm sure for
many Haiku-watchers it will prove more interesting.
Looking at the sample feed that Waldemar provided here (please, do take
a look)...
http://www.google.com/reader/shared/17874889821028276775
Looks nice.
...the annotated feed can provide as much depth of information as a
handwritten summary, and it does so in a very timely manner. Given that
generating the annotated feed would require less effort and that it
actually can be done by multiple people in collaboration, I think this
is a smarter and potentially much more sustainable way to push up to
date info on what's happening in the development of Haiku from a central
point.
If people are willing to subscribe to a feed that seems a good one to go
for. People who just check the website once every now and again might
feel it's yet another thing they can't keep up with lots of regular
small updates on.
I think the collaboration aspect of Waldemar's proposal is also very
important. We are a very generous community and thus good at
contributing (as recently proven by the HCD08 donatio drive). But IMO we
lack a bit in the collaboration department (myself included, btw).
Waldemar has come up with good way to participate and collaborate; let's
try to give it a shot. :)
Perhaps. I'm sceptical how much collaboration would happen, but maybe
update posts are always destined to be this way - someone takes up the
job, runs with it for a little while and then drops the ball for a bit
and someone else takes over with a slightly different approach.
The annotated commit approach may miss the times when there are lots of
small commits that add up to a big amount of work on something that
lacks the headline-grabbing commit, but maybe that's a reasonable price
to pay for the reduction in effort it would bring. We can but try :)
If a proper shared framework is set up maybe there will be additional
contributors. An annotated feed also could provide the slightly less
overwhelming "raw material" for more infrequent update posts such as the
ones I've been trying to write.
Good luck with it anyway.
Simon
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